LONDON – Alarming new research confirms what millions have believed for years – Friday the 13th really is unlucky!

LONDON – Alarming new research confirms what millions have believed for years – Friday the 13th really is unlucky!

A group of English scientists, reporting in the highly respected British Medical Journal, cited statistics and records stretching over a three-year period – 2005 through 2007 – that indisputably prove Friday the 13th is a dangerous date.

The researchers go as far as to say that you shouldn’t leave your house on that day. “Staying at home is recommended,” says a spokesman for the group.

They concluded that your life and health can be in twice as much danger on Friday the 13th as on other days.

Perhaps the most frightening finding of the exhaustive study was that your chances of being admitted to the hospital due to an accident on the highway are two times greater on Friday the 13th.

The professors studied traffic-flow figures on a busy London motorway. They compared accident figures for Fridays the 13th with those of other Fridays.

They found that hospital admissions skyrocketed on the 13th.

No one can explain the rise in bad luck but one theory has to do with the power of suggestion.

The researchers believe that knowing it’s Friday the 13th may increase anxiety and interfere with people’s ability to concentrate on their driving, leaving them at greater risk of crashing.

But another scientist, familiar with the experiment, calls that theory inconclusive.

“Some of the people involved in accidents on Friday the 13th aren’t even aware of what day it is,” said the scientist. “It’s highly unlikely that the power of suggestion is working on them.

“Why are my colleagues unwilling to admit that ‘folk wisdom’ may be accurate – that, for reasons we don’t understand, it may just be an unlucky day.

“When people have believed something for hundreds of years, there’s a strong possibility that it’s true.”